October 12, 2020  |   

 

TOWN OF SUTTON
Pillsbury Memorial Town Hall
93 Main Street Sutton Mills, NH
Sutton Mills, NH 03221
Select Board

October 19, 2020

The chair, Robert DeFelice opened the meeting at 6:00 PM. Present: PeteThompson. Gail Guertin, John Mock, Mark Peterson and Bob Wright. Samantha Gordon, a member of the committee was not present. The first item on the agenda was the election of officers: the committee voted to have Bob Defelice as chair, Gail Guertin as vice chair and Bob Wright as Scribe. As this was a meeting open to the public, there was access via telephone, but no one used this access.

 

The chair reviewed the following:

  1. The weekly budget – money raised for that item – actual money spent to date- balance remaining.
  2. The committee meeting schedule to town meeting. One change, 11-2-2020 meeting on Monday is changed to 11-4-2020 to Wednesday (same time) because of the 11-3-2020 presidential election.
  3. Definition of terms: Parity (what other towns are doing), COLA (cost of living determined by

Budget Committee) and Merit (credited to performance, based on % and determined by BOS) The % I no small thing, if an employee or department head is asking for an increase through a dollar amount, that is not merit, but parity.

  1. Parity is combined between budget committee and BOS.
  2. The 10% rule: when the budget committee’s budget is in the warrant (that is the source used) the Town my increase or decrease the proposed budget by no more than 10%. (State of NH RSA)
  3. Nature and purpose of CR’s (Capital Reserves). This is prepay for large expense Money is set aside each year to build a sufficient amount to pay for the item in question. It stabilizes the tax rate to mitigate peak and valleys. The contribution to the CR is based on two factors
    • the amount needed (b) the time elapsing before the item needed is purchased. The obvious point is that the longer a large expense item can be used, then the annual cost of that item is There was discussion on the time element particularly as it equates to the highway department. The chair pointed out that the BOS has ultimate control of the roads and acts through it agent (town road agent). There were a number of venues of which the time element can be investigated: (a) budget committee meeting with RA (b) discussion with BOS (c) town meeting itself.

 

The meeting adjourned @ 7:18 PM. The next meeting of the budget committee will be @ 6:00 PM on Monday, October 19th @ the Town Hall.

Respectfully submitted,

Robert Wright, Jr., Scribe